Autumn is Coming in the Door

Fall comes to Virginia suddenly. Within a week, it is noticeably cooler in the mornings, and there seem to be less birds singing. I wonder if some have already started their long flight south?

Perhaps it is my imagination, but in September the light seems to change to "fall-light", and  there is a hopefullness in the air. I don't really know how to define this feeling better than that, especially when it seems that there should be some sort of mourning or sorrow for the free days of summer, more of melancholia perhaps. Yet, there is a fullness, an autumnal ripeness that descends like heavy apples from trees with coloring leaves. Fall marks a harvest time, the point of the year when maturity still has its virile strength. Later, in the darkness and cold of winter, it will transition with feeble steps to a maturity identified by finality.

But the pleasure of the fall! A gentle breeze, the rattle of leaves down the street in the evening, the golden light in the Sunday afternoon. I am researching my Gilgamesh/Steampunk novel while sitting on my deck. Books on Zeppelin Airships, Illustrated Encylopedias on Sailing Ships and Steamboat are stacked in tumbled disarray on the glass table top. I pause and sit back as a breeze sweeps through, and suddenly leaves are drifting over head. The oak tree drops acorns regularly, and I can see hawks wheeling overhead while a crow scolds them with a gutteral cawing. When winter comes, that "caw-caw" will be a lonely sound that echoes through bare trees and fields of snow; for now, it is simply a vulgar herald of shorter days and the increasing smell of woodsmoke in the air.

My neighbor's garden is beautiful across the lazy street. The flowers will soon fade, but for now, they match the growing orange and redness of the leaves.

It will be a good week, and I look forward pulling the box down from the closet filled with my sweaters.

Sharpening my verbal fangs

I am being tortured right now. The Individual Concept of Support is the capstone event of my Captain's Career Course, and I am trying not to crash and burn. A concept of support is an English guy's worst nightmare. It is a synchronized compilation of all the logistic considerations supporting a military operation. Massive amounts of math, time-rate-distance, straight line computations between multiple points. Rigorous, strict and disciplined thinking.

Ugh.

So, I took particular and uncharacteristic pleasure in taking my daughter to the doctor during this exercise. While there I did some reading in a great book, The Transitive Vampire. It is a book difficult to define, and since I have only read 15 pages of it, impossible for me to review. I will say that from what I have read so far, it is fascinating.The writer unleashes a maelstrom of a vocabulary composed of articulate witticisms that are uniquely expressed. I believe the purpose of the book is pursuit of grammar for the pure joy of reveling in the dance of words, but with a poetic creation of free-wheeling sentences for the hell of sheer fun. If I am ever an English professor, this book will be on the reading list. There is definite innuendo dancing and a gothic influence to the work- as if the Addams family collaborated on a English Grammar book for their future generation of eclectic misfits. Here is a brief sample:

A compound predicate, or compund verb, is the happy issue of two or more verbs that are joined by and, or, or nor and that belong to the same subject:

The recluse groveled before the mannequin and

kissed the hem of her slip.

She wriggled in acknowledgement or writhed in

uncalled-for shame.

The debutante squatted and pondered her

meaningless life.

The werewolf howled piteously and sought

comfort in the lap of his wife.

His huge, calm, intelligent hands swerved

through the preliminaries and wrestled with

her confusion of lace.

It neither soothed the unrecorded regrets nor

averted the impending doom.

Simply too much fun, buy it from Amazon.com today:

The Transitive Vampire

Deliciously evil- a grammatical delicacy akin to verbal frog-legs.

The Artist's Prayer

I was reading Nina Paley's blog today, and in one of her posts, she scribed/quoted this poem:

Inspiration (a.k.a. Artist’s Prayer)

Our Idea
Which art in the Ether
That cannot be named;
Thy Vision come
Thy Will be done
On Earth, as it is in Abstraction.
Give us this day our daily Spark
And forgive us our criticisms
As we forgive those who critique against us;
And lead us not into stagnation
But deliver us from Ego;
For Thine is the Vision
And the Power
And the Glory forever.
Amen.


Awesome.


Here is a link to her site: 


Nina Paley's Blog

A Moment of Quiet

There are times in the early morning, when the house is silent, that I think time is almost paused. A simple moment of unadulterated existence with the rising sun and a simple breeze. I am struggling to understand why I don't get to feel this more often. Why do I have to wait for labor-day weekend? Although, at the precise moment I typed those words, my sense of gratitude for the little things reminded me that 7 years ago, Labor Day at the Steinmart Shoe Department would have been one hell of a busy work day. Or, that 3 years ago, I would have not even noticed a day off at all while I walked to the chow hall in Iraq.

I do have a choice every day though. It is either to stay on the treadmill of modern life, or get the F- off by simplifying things to the bare basics. Family, a few friends, the pursuit of a full and rich life- that is the focus. Unfortunately, we get so caught up in our societal conditioning that we pack our lives full of action that we forget how to simply "BE".

Life runs us after a while, and it runs us into the ground.

Just the other day, my nine year old daughter Emma had a gloomy expression on her face. When I asked her why, she explained that her best friend told her she would only be able to play on the weekends during the school year because of her busy schedule. Between dance lessons, ballet, music lessons, swim class, and horseback riding, their friendship would have to be on hold from Monday to Friday. This saddened me. Her friend is an amazing little girl, but I see her being carved into that sad American mirage of success. Maybe I'm just not wealthy, and I don't understand that truly successful people need all this formation to reach their dreams in their mid-thirties, but I think it is a Pyrrhic victory. Aren't the late thirties and early forties of  most upper middle-class Americans the time of mid-life crisis and when most people find a regular therapist? Maybe if they spent a little more time "living" than pursuing their goals they would find that the act of truly living life "awake" has rewards that far exceed any "fast-track" gain.

All this is temporary.

I almost quoted the Bible, but I decided paraphrasing it in the colloquial might have more punch: The guy who owns the world at the expense of trading in his soul is one stupid motherf-er. I was going to add in the adjective "sad", but when you buddy-f yourself, than there is an automatic exemption of sympathy for people who stick it to themselves because they choose to.

He's stupid because he bought something worthless by trading the only priceless thing he had. It would be like selling your living body forever into slavery in exchange for a portrait of yourself as the king of the world. Stupid. He is a motherf-er by defaming his life's purpose- why should his mother suffered her pain at childbirth if he is to trade his life away in casual indifference for insignificant and transient gain?

We all grow old, we all retire. Every one of us is replaceable. Even folks who seem to possess eternal fame like Alexander the Great,Queen Elizabeth I, George Washington, etc.- they are but the personalization of myths and archetypes  of generations, figureheads for the yearning of countless individuals who have struggled towards inaccessible satisfaction. Despite the achievements, their hands shook when they died, and two days after death their bodies had a terrible smell. When you consider the millions of people who have lived and whose names are forgotten, our egg-shell lives become very precious to us. Making a good, rich life is all that should matter to us. We should exist for the pure sake of living a beautiful life and passing that legacy to our children.

On a personal note, this entire conversation with Emma took place in a fantastic fort that Emma created with sheets, safety pins and every article of furniture in her room. From the doorway, it looks like a bomb went off, but if you get down and crawl through the secret doorway, she made a house within a house, creating a posh Persian princess two room suite. I might not have Emma running on the American Success treadmill, but if she comes up with such magnificent creativity, I think we are on the right track.

In the end, my life is what I make of it. True, I live in this house of cards society, and since I have a family, we must affect a compromise with the gods of society to survive. However, I can choose to throw a football with my son after school rather than immerse myself in the television. I can jump off the tree on the rope swing with Emma rather than immerse myself in Facebook. Ultimately, I have a time account that is topped off every night with 24 fresh hours, only 8 to 10 of which are dedicated to working. In regard to the others, they are my own.

If you want a unique view of this, read "How to Live on 24 hours a Day". Great little book. Here is the wiki link: How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

As Paul Harvey said, Good Day!